Suggested topics for discussion:

• "Titsburgh" (read on)
• Best sociocultural product of 1975: The Reds, "Chuckles Bites The Dust," The Jeffersons, Ali-Frazier, Operation Frequent Wind or "Only Women Bleed"?
• Which team would he rather have covered in person: 1986 Mets, 1975 Reds, 1927 Yankees or the year 30 Apostles?
• Davey Concepción and the Reds' millionth run that wasn't
• Ken Griffey's discontent
• Why no one tried to steal bases with Joe Morgan at the plate
• Does Joe Morgan think Bob Howsam wrote this book?
• No, seriously, what's Joe Morgan's deal?
• Why do so many great baseball writers watch the damn Royals?
• The Kansas City Star: America's last great sports section?

Something black and primal black drove Pete Rose. Take the All-Star thing. In 1970, they played the All-Star Game in Cincinnati, and the game stretched into extra innings. In the twelfth, Pete led off second, and his teammate Jim Hickman cracked a single to center. Pete never hesitated – that was something he always told his teammates, never pause, never doubt, never hesitate, never slow down – and he rounded third and raced home. Sportswriters in the morning editions around the country were split in their descriptions between "snorting bull" and "rolling train." Amos Otis, the American league center fielder, scooped up the ball and he made a strong throw home. The ball and Pete reached home plate about the same time. But Pete was bigger. He crashed into catcher Ray Fosse, busted the poor kid's shoulder, sent the baseball flying, and defiantly scored the game-winning run. The slide would take on more meaning because Ray Fosse was only twenty three and the most promising young catcher in the game; he was never quite the same after the slide. More than thirty years later, he would still wake up with the echoing pain of that collision ringing in his shoulder. To add a little irony to it all, Pete had Fosse to his house the night before for dinner, though Pete never saw any irony at all in it. Pete was the kind of guy who would invite you to dinner at night and crash through you by day to win a ballgame. It was all part of the deal.

People often asked Pete if he regretted smashing into Fosse – hell, it was just an All-Star Game. It didn't count in the standings. Pete's response was telling. He did not even understand the question. They were playing baseball. He was the winning run. Fosse was blocking the plate. Pete had no choice.

* * *

Pete Rose hated taking walks. Everyone knew that. He would sometimes swing the bat at bad pitches on purpose to avoid taking a walk. This cut to the heart of Pete Rose the ballplayer. Harry Rose did not raise his son to walk. The Roses did not accept charity. Pete would by God take first base, conquer it. There was a game in 1974, the Reds trailed the St. Louis Cardinals by seven runs in the late innings. Bob Gibson was pitching for the Cardinals, Bullet Bob, the scariest pitcher in the game. Batters hit a measly .228 against Gibson over his seventeen-year career, and he took every hit personally. Gibson threw a pitch inside, Pete tried to pull out the way, and the pitch ticked Pete's uniform.

"Ball hit him," the umpire, Bill Williams, shouted, and he pointed toward first. "Take your base."

"The ball didn't hit me, Bill," Rose shouted back, and he stepped back into the batter's box.

"Yes it did, Pete, I heard it hit you, take your base."

"No. You heard wrong. I'm telling you the ball didn't hit me."

"You're taking the base, Pete. The ball hit you, quit being silly …"

"I'm not taking the base, Bill. Didn't hit me. Let me back in the box,"

Pete kept arguing during a lost game that the baseball did not hit him, he did not want the free base, he wanted to get one more swing at the most intimidating pitcher of the time. In the end, the umpire made him take first base, but Pete did not take it well. For the rest of the inning, he yelled, "The ball didn't hit me!" That's how much Pete hated walks. He wanted to swing away. Always.

* * *

Pete Rose sits in the Field of Dreams, a sports store in the Caesar's Palace Shops in Las Vegas. It's 2009. He sits behind a card table and a velvet rope and two young circus barkers who scream, "Come see Pete Rose! Come see the Hit King!" Pete Rose calls himself the Hit King, signs his baseballs that way too, because he cracked four thousand, two hundred and fifty six hits in his career. And no one ever got more.

Pete is guarded by a young woman, Sarah, who, he rarely fails to point out, has a great ass. She does not seem to mind being reminded about her ass or, anyway, she has grown used to it. There are various job-related quirks when it comes to working with Pete Rose. Appreciating ass compliments seems to be one of them.

"So this woman, she sits down right here, right next to me," Pete is saying, and he points at the spot next to him as if it is a historical landmark. "And she has really big breasts, you know? I mean, really, she has big breasts. And she's like leaning over the table, like, um, you know …"

Pete realizes at this point in his presentation that he needs a stand-in to give the story a visual. He calls over to Sarah and asks her to play the woman with the big breasts. She nods. You get the sense this is a recurring role for her. She sits next to Pete, leans far over the table.

"So," Pete says, "she's really showing off her breasts, you know, like I didn't notice them. And then I say to her, where are you from?" At this point, he pauses, and begins the little demonstration.

"So, where you from?" Pete asks Sarah, who is playing the large-breasted woman. She smiles deeply.

"Titsburgh!" she says triumphantly.

"Titsburgh?" Pete asks. "Is that in Tennsylvania?"

And then, Pete Rose laughs. He does not laugh casually, no, he laughs hard, hard enough that he can hardly breathe, hard enough that if he was drinking, liquid would spew out of his nose. He laughs like this is the single funniest thing he has ever heard, and he is hearing it now for the first time.

I'm going to quote this in full, partly because you really need to read the whole thing to get the warp and woof of his argument, but mostly because it approaches, by the end, something like abstract art. From Reynolds' blog, called "Harold Reynolds Presents":

It's been real interesting in the last couple years as I've watched how the importance of statistics has taken over how to analyze a baseball game. I used to play for an old time manager named Dick Williams who used to tell me, "The situation will dictate what happens." He used to call me to his office and say, "I should never have to give you a sign. You should know this is a bunt situation, you should know this is a situation where you need to take a trike, you should know the situation calls for getting the man over. I should never have to give you a sign, the situation dictates what happens."

But what I've been witnessing while I've been a broadcaster is everyone using these stats to try and explain the game of baseball. Not all statistics work. Some do, some don't. And one of the stats that has become real popular is OPS. On-base plus slugging. All of a sudden, it's this stat that defines whether a guy is a good ball player or not. And the fact of the matter is, if you're a power hitter then the situation will dictate what a pitcher does with you - either walk you or pitch you real careful. So more than likely you're going to end up on base and therefore your on-base percentage goes up. This in my mind has become the stat the everyone thinks is the be all and end all. It is not. If you have a ball club that's a great offensive team then that changes everything. But if you have a guy like Adrian Gonzalez, for example, his OPS is going to be high - he's got a lot of home runs and walks a lot...because you're not going to pitch to him. Power guys like Giambi and Dunn have always had high OPS because no one wants to pitch to them. But it takes two hits to score them from first.

This is how the game has changed. Dick Williams is pulling his hair out. This is not something people have reinvented in the game. You can go all the way back to Dave Kingman. When Kingman was hot, you didn't pitch to him. If he wasn't hot, you pitched to him. Big power hitters swing and miss and strikeout. Or they hit home runs and walk. And at the end of the year their OBP is always going to be higher than most of the other guys on the team because they clog the bases.

A few years ago this stat grabbed my ear when someone said that Ichiro doesn't walk enough. So I said, "What do you mean?" And they said his OBP could be so much higher if he walked more. The guy gets 200 hits a season! And he scores over 100 runs. I think that speaks for itself.

So as the old, wise Dick Williams used to tell me, "I should never have to give you a sign. The situation dictates what happens."

The great Joe Posnanski was so discombobulated by this entry he was reduced to babbling about Andrew Dice Clay and the movie Awakenings. No joke.

I know how he feels. I'm not even sure where to begin. In the year of our Lord two thousand and nine, a respected baseball personage is taking to the Internets and criticizing players who "clog the bases." He is not talking about VORP or FRAA or any of those other newfangled acronyms that seem to amuse certain analysts so. He is talking about OPS, which I had figured was one front on which the jocks had conceded the point. I guess I was wrong. I hesitate to speculate, but perhaps Harold is a little miffed that the bulk of objective analysis now tends to devalue speedy ballplayers with a career OPS of .668, which is understandable and even a little sad. Reach out to him, statheads. Give the man a hug.

Enjoy it for what it's worth [Harold Reynolds Presents]
Bugging Harold Reynolds [Joe Posnanski]

We have two Deadcasts this week. First up: a short (or should I say, FUN SIZE!) Deadcast with the great Joe Posnanski, who would like to apologize to Cleveland fans for penning this SI cover story that sealed the Cavs' eventual doom. Actually, I don't really know if Joe is sorry. But I made him read a scripted apology under threat of urineboarding, which seemed to work wonders.

Joe warned me prior to this podcast that's he very boring to talk to in person, so we spend a lot of time talking just what makes him so terribly, painfully dull. Ironically, this topic proved almost kinda not quite that interesting, which was nice. I also read Joe a selection of lesbian-themed haikus. I think it was an important topic to cover. We also talk about Joe's upcoming book on the Big Red Machine, a book Joe Morgan will almost certainly fail to read. And we talk about all the athletes that have threatened to kill Joe. Perhaps because he was boring them.

This first podcast of the week is available for your listening pleasure right here. You can also find the new Deadcast in the iTunes Music Store here. And check out Posnanski's new SI.com column with Bill James here. I'm told it's very baseballey.

Friday's Deadcast guest is actress Justine Bateman. Why? Hey, why the fuck not? Got a question/love letter/restraining order you need read for Justine over the air? Send it to me here.

Special thanks to Liberated Syndication for hosting us. Now sit back, relax, and listen as I waste away twenty perfectly good minutes with the best sportswriter in America.

Today's story comes from venerable Kansas City Star sports columnist Joe Posnanski, who shares this tale of turbulence with former Royals' relief pitcher Jeff Montgomery. Posnanski's online musings can be found here.

—-—-—-—-—-—-—-

Man, I've been on the dark side of the locker room a few times. And I'm supposedly one of the nice guys. Here's one, had to be like 10 or 11 years ago, and I wrote a column ripping Jeff Montgomery, the old Royals relief pitcher. I don't recall all the details, but Jeff had been quoted ripping the manager, and he was also pitching lousy, and those two didn't seem to blend too well in my mind. So I ripped him pretty good. I couldn't tell you now if it was "fair." Maybe it wasn't. It was a long time ago. It probably was fair.

I'd had a pretty decent relationship with Jeff. I respected him and all that and I knew he was a competitive son of a gun, so I thought he might have something to say the next day. Of course, I had to be there to take it. That's part of the deal. So I start driving to the stadium, and I turn on the radio, and they're interviewing Jeff, and he's just ripping me. So I have a pretty good idea what was coming.

I go to the locker room to find him. He's not around. I wait by his locker for a while, and a few guys are telling me, "Man, Jeff's going to kill you," and I'm smiling and nodding, "Yep, he's going to kill me," like a complete jackass.

I'm not much good in those sorts of settings. But the job is the job.

Finally, Jeff shows up and he gets right up in my face, and he says, "I've been looking for you." And I say, "Yeah, Jeff, I've heard. That's why I'm here."

Then he grabs the Royals PR guy, and says, "Follow me." And we go back to the stairwell that was behind the clubhouse. It's just us three now, and Jeff starts wrapping a towel around his hand, like he's going to hit me with it. And then, all of a sudden, he jumps forward, raises his fist, and looks like he's about to hit me, only he stops and he shouts, "I should KILL you, man."

And then he starts screaming. I don't know how long we were in there, but it felt like quite a long time. He's screaming, and he's pacing around, and every so often he gets close to me and raises his hand like he's going to hit me, and then starts pacing around again.

Now, I'm not going to tell you I'm the bravest guy around, because I'm not. I'm a bald, chubby-to-fat sportswriter. At first, I had that, "Damn, I'm going to have a fight with Jeff Montgomery and he's going to pound on me like Sonny pounded Carlo," feeling in my stomach. But after a couple of minutes, I realize he really isn't going to hit me, there isn't going to be a one-sided fight, and then it's like I have one of those out of body experiences. Suddenly it's like I'm looking down on the scene, and I'm thinking, "WOW, this guy is mad. Look at him. He's really, really mad. He's like crazy mad. Look at this guy, pacing around, stomping around, that towel wrapped around his hand, he's really mad. I mean, this guy is mad."

And then, it becomes sort of a mini-struggle not to laugh. Well, I don't know that I was every close to laughing, but he WAS mad.

My favorite part was when the thing ended, and Jeff says, "Do we understand each other?" and he stomps off. The PR guy turned to me and in a shaken voice whispers: "I just want to thank you for allowing me to be a part of that."

Now, as mentioned before, I had a lot of respect for Jeff. And I still do. When the screaming ended, I went outside and there were like five TV cameras around and reporters and they were all like, "What happened?" I walked by, and then went over to Jeff. And he said: "That was between me and Joe, man to man, and I'm not going to talk about it," which I thought was cool. At least he called me a man.

A couple of months later, he retired. And I wrote a pretty positive retirement column: he deserved that. I wrote a little bit about the incident and talked about how Jeff was really good pitcher who succeeded because he was a battler. He never backed down. He seemed to appreciate that.

A few years later, I ended up competing in the Royals fantasy camp, which Jeff happened to run. He was going around the room asking people which number they wanted. He turned to me and said something like, "Hey, Posnanski, what number does Mr. Sportswriter want?"

I said, "What number did you wear, Jeff?"

He said: "Twenty-one."

I said: "Yep. That's the one I want. You know you're my hero." Nobody around the room got it, but Jeff smiled, and nodded, and we understood each other.

** It's a good thing, looking back, that Paul O'Neill had not been in the fantasy camp seven years earlier.

The slate:

• Sally Jenkins, author of the outstanding The Real All Americans: The Team That Changed a Game, a People, a Nation.

• Joe Posnanski. The estimable and awesome Kansas City Star baseball columnist just wrote a grand book about Buck O'Neill.

• Seth Mnookin. The Red Sox fan and chronicler has a history around these parts, including this epic interview with our own A.J. Daulerio.

That's a pretty badass bunch; we'll be there, and if you're around at 8 p.m. tomorrow night, you should be too.